Tennis News You Can Use
As it turns out, the period between Christmas and New Years is a traditionally slow news week for USTA tennis. This lull provides me with the perfect opportunity to share and comment on some content gleaned off the National Senior Men’s Tennis Association (NSMTA) website and discussion forums.
The NSMTA site has an undated post that has been up for at least a month that provides a summary of the problems that the USTA Adult Competition Committee (ACC) has been trying to solve for National Senior Tennis. I find this summary to be insightful as to the challenges faced by the ACC. Additionally, it illuminates the perception of the problems from the NSMTA perspective.
(1) A lack of awareness by USTA members of national divisions and tournaments
(2) A crowded and “top heavy” national tournament schedule that needed more balance
(3) Tremendous variation in the player experience from tournament to tournament and division to division
(4) A continual decline in player participation in adult events at all levels over the past two decades
(5) Constraints on the amount of time players can commit to playing in national tournaments.
Excerpt from the NSMTA “USTA Adult Tournament Changes for 2021” page [1]
That is… quite a list. At first glance, I agreed that most of these are problems that need solutions. Initially, I only took exception with item #2, which indicates that the tournament schedule is crowded and “top heavy.” Putting on my engineering hat, the language is reflective of a solution that is masquerading as a problem. I will spare you with the Requirements Engineering diatribe. Suffice it to say that some engineers are passionate about that topic.
Once that leap is taken with item #2, it becomes apparent that many other items on the list potentially have the same issue. In fact, the list could be reorganized centered around one primary parent problem, which is continual decline in player participation. The other items could easily be reframed as potential reasons for the problem of decline in player participation. This is what reframing the problem statement would look like in practice:
Problem Statement: There is a continual decline in player participation in adult events at all levels over the past two decades.
Potential drivers and root causes for this problem include:
(1) A lack of awareness by USTA members of national divisions and tournaments
(2) A crowded and “top heavy” national tournament schedule that needed more balance
(3) Tremendous variation in the player experience from tournament to tournament and division to division
(5) Constraints on the amount of time players can commit to playing in national tournaments.
Reframing the NSMTA “USTA Adult Tournament Changes for 2021” list
The reframing of the list is structured as a better starting point for solving problems. Put another way, in order to solve a problem there has to be clarity on what the problem actually is.
One of the recent discussion forums on the NSMTA site discusses Voluntary Consolations as a potential innovation coming in 2021. While there is player consensus that voluntary consolations is a “solution” to a problem, I don’t see a direct mapping into the problem list outlined above. Probably the best fit is in “player experience.”
I will be the first to admit that I don’t have all the solutions. Examining the list of problems reveals that the USTA ACC is attempting to solve a multi-faceted and complex problem. There are a lot of perspectives and constituencies that cloud the water and make it even more challenging.
In that environment it is critical to have clarity on the problems that the organization is attempting to solve. Only then can solutions be effectively evaluated.
- USTA Adult Tournament Changes for 2021, National Senior Men’s Tennis Association informational post, viewed 12/17/2020. (This is summary of ta new round of questions from the National Women’s Tennis Organization and the USTA Adult Competition Committee.)
- USTA 2021 Tournament Changes – Voluntary Consolations, National Senior Men’s Tennis Association (NSMTA) Discussion Forum, last viewed 12/27/2020.
